Who We Are

We have a passion for making things that people love.

Read more about Penzu and the team behind it.

What is Penzu?

Penzu is an online diary and personal journal that is focused on privacy. With a unique and compelling user experience, it makes writing online as easy and intuitive as writing on a pad of paper.

Origins of Penzu

Why isn't there an easy and secure way to record your thoughts online? All of the current online solutions are either clunky, bloated, or not geared for private writing. Why would you want to keep a private journal on a blogging service that's intended for public use? The alternatives to keeping private information on a desktop computer or in a notepad while effective, aren't entirely safe either.

Penzu offers a secure place to store your thoughts and ideas in the cloud. Not only are entries password protected in an online account, but individual entries can be locked with military-grade encryption.

With our powerful security also comes extreme ease of use. The core component of the interface is the Pad - a metaphor for a pad of paper. This universal design element has allowed Penzu to transcend language and cultural barriers as people from 170 countries continue to use the service. We have always made the user experience a top priority and it is one of our main differentiations from complicated and confusing competitors.

The name, Penzu, comes from many influences, but mainly it is a derivative of the Latin "pensare" which means to think or be full of thought.

The Team

Alexander Mimran
President & Founder

Alexander started Penzu to solve a personal need of his: why isn't there a secure place to keep one's thoughts on the web? After a year of developing on the evenings and weekends, Penzu launched a minimum viable product and garnered the interest of journalers from the get-go. It since has acquired many passionate users worldwide who pour their lives into their Penzu journals.

Alexander has a product development and marketing background, and is the driving force behind Penzu. He previously worked as a freelance graphic designer and branding consultant, helping startups and various small businesses. His vision is to make Penzu the most popular digital alternative to pen and paper, something we are all using less and less of as computers and mobile devices change our behavior. Paper, after all, has been around since the 2nd century BC...

Michael Lawlor
Co-founder & Lead Developer

Mike has been with Penzu since day one, and is a master of all things web. With a background in Artificial Intelligence, Mike has experience in diverse areas such as: domain registration, web hosting, e-commerce, online job banks, mobile social networks, user-driven content, rich media collaboration tools, and the latest in cloud computing.

What started as a side project for him to both showcase his skills and take them to new levels has blossomed into a worldwide hit. Penzu's distinct harmony between an attractive and intuitive user experience and solid back-end architecture is a testament to Mike's prowess.

Simon Wilkinson
Senior Developer

Simon's broad base of experience in providing customer-centric solutions and his desire to provide leading edge products are valuable additions to the Penzu team.

He has a background in Computer Science, having received both his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Carleton University in Ottawa. His research work at Carleton involved the use of swarm intelligence to secure communications within anonymous overlay networks. He has had experience building everything from service quality assurance solutions for operators and customers of wireless broadband network to enterprise systems management automation.